


I think I’ll let go now

by SwordSoup



Series: Dream SMP fics that didn’t age well [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Crying TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Depressed TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, No Romance, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Supportive Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Techno is trying his best, anyways time to go listen to mitski and ponder death, but I love Tommy and him both, hes also mentally ill, hes not perfect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwordSoup/pseuds/SwordSoup
Summary: Inspired by the scene in “I’m with Technoblade” where Tommy has to cross over his wooden bridge in the nether to return home. That moment felt like it could’ve had so much more gravity.And, so, I’m supplying it.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: Dream SMP fics that didn’t age well [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189376
Comments: 13
Kudos: 236





	I think I’ll let go now

**Author's Note:**

> Is this a little dramatic for a minecraft twitch stream? Sure, maybe. Did I have fun writing it? I don’t know, you tell me. Is it 2 am? Oh my fucking god it is.
> 
> Anyways!! If you’re confused about any plot points pls read the end notes. I’ll chat a bit down there. I know everything is a bit disjointed in this. (Purposefully, since it’s from the perspective of someone having a panic attack.)

The ground beneath his feet is brittle. 

Tommy would know — he’d laid the plank out, nailed down in a futile effort to drag dwindling attention from anyone who might come to his home. A short ways ahead of him stands Technoblade, a low chuckle slipping from the man at the end of Tommy’s stuttered sentence.

He doesn’t like this place.

The signs hung about remind him of desperation. Of the whipping ash and biting, boiling wind, of staring into a purple portal and knowing that he will  _ never  _ be able to walk back through it. He reads each one, shame burning in his gut. All he’d wanted — everything he’d  _ begged for —  _ was for company. A single visit, a single person coming to hold conversation with him.

His hands crawl up to the blackened plating of his armor. His stomach twists. Should be be discarding it? Someone’s far ahead on the path before him, now, as he stands there, poised to step onto the wooden path bridging his home and his exile. And he  _ knows,  _ out of  _ anyone,  _ there’s only one person it could be. Only one person who cares, any longer, to find Tommy and to do anything other than  _ laugh.  _

The purple of their armor twists, warping, and a chuckle he’d been  _ sure  _ had been Techno’s breaks, dipping into the cold, stilted emotion of Dream’s garrish amusement. 

Tommy’s in the nether, correct?

Taking stock of his surroundings, he recognizes it all. The signs, scribbled over with his own futility. The planks beneath his feet —  _ when had he stepped onto them? —  _ warped with the awful, damning heat. There’s armor wrapped about his chest, and he feels a sick panic crawl up beneath the plates when he realizes that he hasn’t given it away yet. 

Given it to who? He looks about. There’s no one there — but a specter about ten feet away narrows their eyes at him, a sword raised, watching him, waiting, and he suddenly knows it’s Dream. There’s no other option. No one else to care, to witness, to watch as Tommy takes a second step forward, suddenly desperate to please. 

The planks ripple under his weight, but he continues. He couldn’t dare stay here, paralyzed in his indecision, waiting for Dream to come to him. He won’t  _ wait  _ here, armor slick with sweat, foreign against his aching bones, and so he walks. He dances forth and across the planks, his arms outstretched on either side of his chest, head raised high in a lazy attempt to not lose the balance he so carelessly throws about. The sounds beneath him — the crackling both of wood and of lava — mix, the full roar of heat below coming up as he takes another step. His feet feel light as anything as he races, daring to hope that he might be fast enough to  _ pray. _

The moment he’s on solid ground, he falls to his knees.

Dream, up ahead, starts to advance towards him. Tommy babbles something  _ shit —  _ an apology, broken, horrible — and starts to strip himself of his armor, tossing plates of flattened ore and strips of leather as far from him as he can. There isn’t any  _ pit,  _ but he supposes that Dream might intend to throw every last piece of him into the lava, just to watch it boil.

Dream grabs his shoulder. Tommy jolts, another apology ripped up from him without permission. God  _ damnit-  _ this isn’t how he’s meant to be doing any of this. He’s gotten used to his routine, armor thrown without a touch, word, or gesture. There’s no pain, no worry nor argument, and certainly no  _ touch. _

(No one touches him. He’s not enough- not nearly good enough to deserve something so simply human as that.)

Dream shakes his shoulder, Tommy’s body shuddering in turn. There’s nothing  _ left  _ of him — and he says so, screaming it aloud, his shaking hands scattering the armor away in hopes that it might be  _ enough.  _ He goes next for his inventory, tugging out item after item — weapons, fistfuls of  _ dirt —  _ without discrimination, something like a silent sob breaching his lips as he hurls his possessions at the man before him. 

Dream doesn’t let up, continuing to shake him, making noises entirely unintelligible under the agonizing din of the  _ nether.  _ There’s nothing left of Tommy, wasted away along with-

_ “-chnoblade!” _

The name accompanies a slap. Dream’s voice is high, panicked, almost, running with an undercurrent of fury, enough to have Tommy flinching away from him. He scurries back, another sob choking him as he lifts a hand to clutch at his face, now burning with more than just shame. But, as his hand scrapes the edge of the walkway, the pain finally brings something round.

A pink, shapeless thing stands before him. Two arms have raised — surrender, or threat? — a wide red swatch of fabric attached to their back whipping about in the wind. The more he watches, the more Tommy’s sure it’s trying to  _ speak. _

Well- whatever it is, it’s sure as hell not Dream. So-

-he chucks a rock at it.

He immediately regrets it. The thing drops it’s arms, and Tommy goes further backward, panicked breaths tumbling out with a thousand apologies. There he is, doing  _ exactly _ what’s expected of him. Ruining things, destroying with wild abandon, manipulating people into the idea that he could be anything but  _ cruel. _

The thing freezes.

Tommy’s breath catches in his throat. The not-Dream leans forward, ignoring the look the teenager opposite shoots him, grabbing at fistfuls of his own hair in an attempt to do  _ something.  _ It scoops up a solid mass from the ground, sliding it between the red of its fabric and the shining black of its armor. Its slow steps forward do little to quell his anxiety, Tommy tracing its advance with wide, bloodshot eyes. And —  _ fuck —  _ it’s grabbing for him, leaning between the thick, hot air of the land and Tommy, reaching for him. He flinches and lets out a cry, thoughts scattered to the wind as he throws an arm out.

It meets solid metal.

Tommy freezes, one arm curled across his face, the other suddenly registering something akin to pain amongst his panic. His chest heaves, his entire body trembling with the effort to stop from passing out and falling off the cliff side. But, beneath every ounce of manic energy rushing through him, he can register one sensation with clarity.

It’s cool, hard and damp, the thing he hit. His arm slides across it, sticking only slightly, as he shifts. It moves gently, the hand holding it moving as the person above him breathes, ever so slowly.

The plating of metal meets his hand as he curls his fingers. 

It’s armor. The person-thing —  _ Dream? —  _ holds it out without hesitation, one hand curled on their knee and the other holding out what Tommy can assume to be a chestplate. The arm against his eyes moves, opening his line of sight to register netherite, swirling purple enchantment flickering across the surface.   
  


Behind it, Tommy can hear a Ghast.

“You with me?”

The voice is soft. Uncharacteristically so, undeservedly kind. Tommy leans towards it regardless, a low, wounded sort of noise coming up and mingling with the smoke below him. And, all of a sudden, Technoblade registers.

Tommy jolts forward with a sudden, shuddering gasp. The man leaps backward as well, but his glasses-shrouded eyes widen when Tommy makes a wild grab for the armor. It’s cutting within his palm, edges hard and sharp. He digs his skin into the cracks and grounds it into his veins, feeling his body break and a wave crash against him. Tommy collapses against the chest plate, a horrible, wailing sort of noise erupting as blood starts to coat his hand. 

Dream is  _ gone. _

Instead, there, a replacement equal parts relieving and horrifying, is Technoblade, hand hovering uncertainly above Tommy’s head as he looks up. He’s bent to one knee, braid whipping about behind him, pink-red hair the color of spit and blood starting to come loose. All Tommy can see, though, is a staggering lack of  _ green. _

He isn’t sure when he starts to cry. Perhaps, before awareness, he already had been. Hot tears dribble down his face and into his hands, hitting the chest plate, tucked between his knees and his chest in a stream that he suddenly realizes — he can’t stop. What he is sure of, suddenly, is that with a worrying amount of care, Techno unlaces his cape, shrugs it off, and drapes it carefully over Tommy’s shoulders.

His forehead sinks to hit the ground, and Tommy screams in relief. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tommy could’ve SO easily panicked there. As someone who will at LEAST get a terrible sort of feeling at the barest bones of an abusers presence, I thought it’d be interesting to delve into what could’ve happened.
> 
> Basically: Tommy fucking panics. He hasn’t seen that plank he’d made since before Dream banned him from the nether and essentially ostracized him from EVERYTHING. The thought of it all overwhelms him, and combining that with Techno’s presence (I’ve always thought he doesn’t sound too dissimilar from Dream at times) he ends up spiraling. 
> 
> Conditioning makes him think he should be getting rid of his armor. He does so, and when someone he assumes is Dream starts to shake him, he spirals more. 
> 
> Techno (as a personal headcanon) has DEFINITELY had to deal with his own panic attacks before, but he’s usually so alone he’s never had to help anyone else. He tries to slap Tommy to snap him out of it. This sets Tommy off further, as he believes he’s done something wrong/Dream might be about to finally kill him. 
> 
> Techno realizes what’s going on (with the armor) and tries offering Tommy a chestplate to see if it’ll help the boy realize that he isn’t Dream, and he isn’t trying to take anything. 
> 
> —-
> 
> Anyways! This was an interesting little thing to write. Comments and kudos basically keep me going, so I’d appreciate any tiny crumb you’d be willing to throw my way! Constructive criticism and compliments are both helpful, haha


End file.
